


by a thread (i'm not broken yet)

by estel_willow



Series: Alex Manes Appreciation Week 2019 [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Week 2019, Alternate Universe, alex is an alien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 20:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18724882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow
Summary: He can't stop replaying what he's found. Can't stop thinking about what that means. What that means about his life. Everything- Everything's a lie and Alex feels the weight of that falling on his shoulders with enough force that he doesn't know how he'll ever get back to his feet.





	by a thread (i'm not broken yet)

Alex pushes himself away from the screen and turns away from the computer. The decrypted files are flashing behind him, mocking him with seventy years of information and nearly thirty years of notes and observations and he can't breathe. He pushes his hands through his hair and gets to his feet, vertigo sweeping over him and he staggers forwards, catching his hands on the table so he doesn't fall. His leg aches in a way it hasn't since he woke up in a military hospital two weeks after his convoy was blown up and the world tilts nauseatingly. He can't breathe; the walls of the world are crashing around him as his perception of his own life, of everything he's ever known is torn asunder around him. The cool metal of the table under his skin isn't enough to ground him. It isn't enough to calm his racing pulse, his whirling mind, the panic that's clawing at the edges of his throat and his vision and his thoughts.

He can't stop replaying what he's found. Can't stop thinking about what that means. What that means about his life. Everything- Everything's a lie and Alex feels the weight of that falling on his shoulders with enough force that he doesn't know how he'll ever get back to his feet. 

Project Cuckoo started in 1947, not long after the Roswell crash. It had been an offshoot of Shepherd and one of the very first projects to come out of Caufield. There had been several pods discovered, though they hadn't been called that in the official reports. The official reports had described them as being orange, glowing orbs. There had only been one which had 'remained functional'. It had a 'small humanoid ET' inside and it had taken them fifty years to work out how to get the alien inside out.

Alex has spent the last five hours combing through the documents chronologically until he got to 1991. Specifically, August 15th, 1991 when a device covered in silver was pushed into the pod and a baby was pulled out. There was a thudding in his chest, and he had to think it was just a coincidence that the baby was pulled out of the pod on _his birthday_ , except the more he looked the less it was. He was 'born' the day the baby alien was pulled out of the pod. He watched a video of the baby wailing and screaming and Jim Valenti holding it in his arms, hushing it gently and saying that he could take him home, raise him alongside Kyle. Jesse Manes' voice was stern; Jim couldn't do what was needed. Couldn't raise the kid in a way that proved that these aliens were murderous by nature. That they were nothing but killers, ruthless monsters. This was their opportunity to prove it.

He remembers that his world started buzzing at that point, but he'd kept reading. His school reports were there, his whole life narrowed down to weekly, monthly, annual reports. Medical check-ins that he'd been told he had to attend were there, blood test results and psychological evaluations that he hadn't even realised he had been undergoing. Reports of his rebellious nature and how it was frustrating that he never retaliated no matter what was done to him. The nature of the reports shifted, Jesse's hatred for _what_ Alex was as much as _who_ he was bled through in a way that was unprofessional but he supposed the reports never really went anywhere else after Shepherd was shut down. The deeper he sank, the worse it seemed to get. The doctors that had worked on him every time he was injured out on tour. The surgeon that worked on him when he lost his leg, the lab that ran the blood. Shepherd had only been one small part of a much larger programme that had kicked off after they'd realised just what a goldmine of information they had at their fingertips. Everything about his life was fake, everything had been part of a carefully constructed lie.

His fingers fumble for his cell phone and he taps out a desperate text to Kyle asking him to come to the bunker - no, to come to the cabin - no, to meet him at the hospital - no, the bunker but to bring a portable kit to conduct some on-site testing. Kyle's response is immediate and concerned and Alex just repeats that they need to meet at the bunker in an hour and he turns back to look at the screen again. He tells Kyle not to call and he's glad that the phone doesn't ring because he doesn't know if he can talk right now when breathing is a challenge in itself. He forces his eyes to lift to look at his name in military print on the screen and he presses his lips together, grits his teeth. If he hadn't hated his father before for everything that has been done to him now, he would now. 

The screen's mocking him, he's sure of it and he slumps forward, fingers buried in his hair and trying to control his breathing as above his head the words blink slow and maddening: **Subject RSWX#102, current alias: Captain Alexander Manes, USAF**.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 2 of the Alex Manes Appreciation Week 2019, the prompt being AU. This is likely the start of a longer fic that was gonna be my hiatus project, and then turned into a sprawling monster. You're welcome to join me on the ride :) 
> 
> Tags'll get updated as I go.


End file.
